Ways To Motivate Your Students

Published March 31, 2017

No matter what their age is; kindergarten or college students, it is very hard to keep them motivated. The attention of a human is naturally limited to 45 minutes so you really can’t expect them to be attentive to a four hour lecture. This attention span is even less in younger students so it is important that you make the lessons interesting and fun so that they would eagerly pay attention and also motivate them. So here are some of the things you could do to motivate them.

1. Make a positive impression

As a teacher, you need to make them feel that you are worth listening to. Since kindergarten, they have come across so many teachers who have been pushing them to study, think and work hard so every time a new teacher walks in, they are reluctant to accept you as their mentor. So you need to impress them. Talk to them openly while showcasing your passion in what you teach. You need to be energetic if you expect your students to actively respond today.

2. Give assignments

Do not give them the usual essays to write for assignments. Use some interesting activities such as quiz competitions, crossword puzzles, role plays, debates etc. so that they could showcase their various talents too. Let them think out of the box, rather than sticking to the same thinking pattern. Do the unexpected. For example, they would obviously expect the IB math tutorial class to be no fun and games. However, you could use the above fun activities to make it interesting.

3. Take their opinions into account

Students like when they are being heard of. So always get them to participate in the lesson by having active discussions so that it does not become a boring lecture with only one way communication. Ask questions, talk about open topics where they could give out their ideas. Give random problems and observe how they come up with creative solutions. Of course if you are doing a IB math tutorial, you cannot talk about much, however randomly take up a current topic and ask your students’ opinions on it.

4. Make yourself approachable

Students love a teacher who is always ready to help them out. It motivates them to learn more, and also do additional reading on the subject. Always give them extra information so that they would take some time off to do some research. It will also show them that you are updated and would want to learn more about it too.